author
Florence May
A gifted English pianist who became one of Johannes Brahms’s close students and early biographers, she helped bring his life and music to a wider public. Her writing blends firsthand musical insight with the perspective of someone who knew her subject personally.
2 Audiobooks
The Life of Johannes Brahms (Vol 2 of 2)
by Florence May
The Life of Johannes Brahms (Vol 1 of 2)
by Florence May
About the author
Born in London in 1845, Florence May was an English pianist, composer, and writer on music. She studied first with her father, the music educator Edward Collett May, and later worked with Clara Schumann, an experience that brought her into Brahms’s circle.
She is best remembered for her connection to Johannes Brahms, both as a pupil and as the author of The Life of Johannes Brahms. Because she knew him and his musical world directly, her work became an important early source for readers interested in his life and career.
Alongside her writing, she built a reputation as a serious musician in her own right. She died in 1923, but her name remains closely linked with Brahms scholarship and with the wider musical culture of late nineteenth-century Europe.